I don't understand this article. Unless its author can predict the future, or knows a lot of things that nobody else in the public knows, they can't possibly draw conclusions about exactly what Snowden did.
Snowden himself has made it clear that he took documents from NSA en masse, far more documents than have ever been disclosed in the media.
How many of those documents have been released to the press? We don't know. But what we do know is, of the documents he gave to the press, only a subset have been released. In Greenwald's case, that's because it was decided that a titrating drip of stories would keep the narrative alive in the media and, not coincidentally, better serve the interests of the publications releasing the stories. In other cases it's because journalists have resisted full disclosure out of concern for its propriety.
What's been done with the zero to a billion documents that haven't been provided to the press? Who knows? Have they been encrypted and stuck on the Internet as an insurance policy? Have they been provided to Russian intelligence? Were they stolen from Snowden in an embassy in China? Are they vouchsafed with his acquaintances? Does Wikileaks have them? Nobody knows. Including the author of this blog post.
There are places those documents can go that will alter history's judgement on Snowden. For instance, if he offered wholesale access to US intelligence secrets to Russia, a country which painstakingly and overtly spies on its own citizens and routinely kills journalists (Barton Gellman is not in hiding in the US, for what it's worth), there aren't going to be any adoring spreads about him my grandkid's history book.
You can tell by the questions that jump to my mind what I generally think of Snowden. But nobody who (a) is skeptical of Snowden and (b) posts on Internet message boards could possibly be unaware of how out-on-a-limb that impression must be, because Snowden skepticism invariably whips up a frothy swell of criticism. Unfortunately, the author of this blog post doesn't seem to have the benefit of a critical readership; it's clear that he hasn't actually thought through what's happened.
> they can't possibly draw conclusions about exactly what Snowden did.
Anyone can draw a conclusion from an event they have observed. They can't draw conclusions about the future conclusions of others (ie: what side 'history' will be on.)
>Snowden himself has made it clear that he took documents from NSA en masse, far more documents than have ever been disclosed in the media.
So?
>In Greenwald's case, that's because it was decided that a titrating drip of stories would keep the narrative alive in the media...
Don't you imagine that it is a non-trivial task to vett these documents, so in addition to having the practical benefit of prolonging the time that the material spends at the "front of peoples' minds;" it is a necessary condition of the situation.
>There are places those documents can go that will alter history's judgement on Snowden.
Be careful, you can't possibly draw conclusions...
>(Barton Gellman is not in hiding in the US, for what it's worth)
Barrett Brown isn't exactly having a great time in the Homeland.
>Unfortunately, the author of this blog post ...
It's an opinion piece. I'm not even sure there is anything to argue here.
Barrett Brown was implicated in helping publish a dump of credit card numbers on behalf of the people who stole them. Barrett Brown is not Barton Gellman, and of the two, it's Gellman that poses a real problem for the USG, not the crazy heroin addict.
If by 'helping publish' you mean 'linking to and talking about what was already published,'[1] sure.
What's the difference between Brown (the "crazy heroin addict" journalist, your words) and Gellman, who helped publish a dump of secret documents on behalf of the person who stole them?
I see a pretty clear distinction between publishing documents that are clearly in the public interest and publishing credit card numbers in an effort to trouble and shame people whose politics don't comport with my own.
Snowden's motives are political, and they could also be construed as an effort to trouble and shame the people who didn't agree with his interpretations. And whether any of it is in the public interest is also debatable in some circles. Of course, I'm just playing devil's advocate.
In my view there's a pretty clear distinction between simply linking to an e-mail dump containing credit card numbers and publishing an e-mail dump containing credit card numbers.
Brown was interested in those e-mails because he actually had a journalistic endeavor in Project PM, an "actionable data set regarding the intelligence contracting industry, the PR industry's interface with totalitarian regimes, the mushrooming infosec/"cybersecurity" industry."
You can keep calling him a "crazy heroin addict" if it makes you feel better, there's bias on your part for obvious reasons, but it only makes you look silly.
I'm comfortable with what my reaction to Barrett Brown's case says about me and my beliefs, far more than I am comfortable with what my beliefs about the Snowden case might connote.
With all due respect, aren't the hypothetical abuses of Snowden files ultimately just FUD at this point? Snowden's public statements have given the impression that he cares deeply about the U.S., giving me the impression that he probably isn't going to intentionally release the documents to those that would seek to abuse them.
However, I would be very uncomfortable with him giving full access to the unencypted stash to a place like Wikileaks. But still, I think innocent until proven guilty of mishandling his stash should apply.
They are pretty much exactly that. Every accusation of "well obv he has given everything to russia and china" is completely without evidence and has been vehemently denied by people with actual knowledge of the situation (such as Glenn Greenwald). It's really nothing more than yet another angle in the attempt to discredit the messenger.
For all those speculations, skepticism and criticism, one would have to ask how much is rooted in reality. Without facts, all that is left is an emotional investment in defending the NSA.
Has there been any indication that documents has been stolen/given to Russia or China?
tptacek, you work in security so you know how to analyze probabilities. If we take the assumption that one of those countries managed to gain access to the documents, what the probability that it would still a half year later be kept secret? What is the probability that NSA would not use any concrete facts to denounce Snowden and other would be whistleblower in media? If U.S. informers, spies and facilities was attacked, whats the probability that it could happen without it becoming public?
The idea that Snowden could sell the information brings similar questions. Whats the probability that huge amount of money could be provided to Snowden without NSA being able to track it? If they could track it, whats the probability that they would keep this fact secret?
Anybody who is skeptical of scare theories looks for facts. As we all know, same is true for Software security. When people speculate that NSA can break RSA, we ask for some proof. Thus, when Snowden skeptics speculate, I ask for some proof, or at least what the probabilities are.
Whenever someone raises a point that Snowden might have revealed something that shouldn't be revealed, they forget that it's not only Snowden to blame for it, but the entire system from bottom to the top. If your personal security depends on arbitrary decisions of numerous officials, contractors and directors in several agencies and their arbitrary cooperation with similar agencies in foreign countries, then the problem is systemic; and Snowden is the last person to be blamed. Basically, your government is not doing the job you wish it was doing the right way. If you don't like and try not to support the system, then what do you care what Snowden released - you already accept the system as broken. However, if you rely and like the system, then you have to reconsider who you trust and with what.
Snowden here could only make you a service by pointing out a problem. And we all know that he really did not have any other way to do it. When he tried to discuss weaknesses privately within the system, he was dismissed. We know it not based on what he claimed (he could lie), but based on how NSA reacted and continues to react to the problem of trust. They made it clear that any employee who tries to discuss that topic would have a lot of trouble. It's manifested in how they sent out brainwashing instructions to their employees, how they dismissed the topic in the press and how aggressive they are to Snowden generally. How many people would like to risk just chatting to their boss after all that?
Anyone who likes the idea of all-powerful all-knowing god-like government agencies like NSA, army, FBI etc, should consider who little leverage and security they have in the result. When you have zero idea how your "national security" is being provided and all you know is there's a huge concentration of power somewhere at your expense, that simply means practically zero security for you.
No, your argument is illogical. Of course the entire system is to blame. Of course NSA shares some of the (hypothetical) blame if Russia gains access to US intelligence data, if only (in the highly unlikely event that it turns out Snowden was literally an agent) because of what NSA's own conduct does to the optics of what happened.
But that in no way immunizes Snowden from the consequences of his own actions.
It is perfectly possible for multiple parties to be implicated, and each for different reasons.
Talking about Snowden's faults is like debating how candies are bad for your teeth while your city is being bombed. Technically, you can talk about such issue in isolation, but if you really care about your health, you should first solve the bombing problem and then worry about your teeth.
My argument is about priorities. If the entire point of blaming Snowden at all is "because national security", then it's important to start solving the problem of "national security" with the most important issues first. The issue number one: the people who supposedly provide you with national security 1) require blind trust from you 2) were abusing that trust 3) always lie 4) have guns and you don't 5) immune to the consequences of their actions and you aren't. To understand that you should be thankful to Snowden in particular.
Where I have a hard time with the "Snowden as hero" storyline is my nagging suspicion that he make very clear and deliberate attempts to place himself in a position to have access to these materials for the express purpose of stealing them.
He was essentially fired from the employ of the CIA only to find another position at NSA. Apparently the CIA got wise to his attempts and shut him off. The NSA wasn't so lucky.
None of this detracts from the disclosures of NSA overreach. But we would be foolish to discount the possibility that all of this is a huge smokescreen for a concerted and consistent attempt to weaken or expose US intelligence operations. The fact that an impingement of our sources and methods helps our adversaries cannot be understated.
>He was essentially fired from the employ of the CIA
No, he was not:
"The C.I.A did not file any report on Snowden indicating that it suspected he was trying to break into classified computer files to which he did not have authorized access while he was employed at the C.I.A., nor was he returned home from an overseas assignment because of such concerns," Todd Ebitz, an agency spokesman, said in the statement.
Did you read that article? I did when it was first published.
Are we really at the point where we take the word of an "agency spokesman" and not the sourcing of the journalists who quoted two unnamed sources to verify the story?
Yes, I did read the article. Here is Snowden's account:
>Mr. Snowden said that in 2008 and 2009, he was working in Geneva as a telecommunications information systems officer [...] He began pushing for a promotion, but got into what he termed a “petty e-mail spat” in which he questioned a senior manager’s judgment.
>Several months later, he was writing his annual self-evaluation when he discovered flaws in the software of the C.I.A.’s personnel Web applications. He warned his supervisor, but his boss advised him to drop the matter. After a technical team also brushed him off, his boss finally agreed to allow him to test the system to prove that it was flawed.
>He did so by adding some code and text “in a nonmalicious manner” to his evaluation document that showed that the vulnerability existed, he said. His immediate supervisor signed off on it and sent it through the system, but a more senior manager — the man Mr. Snowden had challenged earlier — was furious and filed a critical comment in Mr. Snowden’s personnel file.
So the local IT guy goes looking for vulnerabilities, finds them, SAYS he tried to alert people, then runs an EXPLOIT, and he's mad because he got a ding in his personnel file?
He did know that he was working for an intelligence agency, right? In what world is it acceptable to run an exploit on your company machines if it's not your job to find those exploits? A little Occams's Razor goes a long way.
And my point is that you can't take Snowden's assertions at face value. His behavior doesn't comport with someone who was a patriot and found himself facing a difficult decision to disclose.
I hope you understand that this is only your opinion. In my view (and others who support Snowden's efforts) his actions are exactly the kind I would take to save my country from itself.
Please make careful note of what I'm actually saying here:
The fact that the NSA was guilty of overreach doesn't mean that Snowden's actions to reveal that overreach WEREN'T assisted or prompted by a foreign power with everything to gain from seeing our security apparatus reined in.
His actions would have had FAR more impact and been FAR beyond reproach if he had made his disclosures and stayed right here in the USA to face the punishment the government sought to impose. IMHO (and my opinion is the one that matters to me), you cannot categorically deny with any assurance that this whole episode isn't connected in any way to a foreign intelligence operation.
Remember, we had Ames and we had Hanssen. Both of those guys stayed hidden for a LONG while. If Snowden hadn't been tipped off to the NSA investigation of his activities, would he still be working for Booz-Allen?
>And my point is that you can't take Snowden's assertions at face value.
Good thing we aren't taking them at face value, seeing as the CIA spokesman lightly corroborates his account rather than your assertion that he was fired for attempting to access and steal classified materials at the CIA.
And while we're on the subject of "moles," neither the internal NSA investigation nor the FBI investigation has found anything supporting your conspiracy theory to date.
What conspiracy theory? Do you really think that if there was real evidence that a foreign power was involved that the administration would be up-front with that information? What if the whole purpose of the action is to make them guess if the Russians and/or Chinese have copies of the documents?
Not knowing for sure what the exposure is fuels the nightmares of the whole NSA. What if the Russians and Chinese know EVERYTHING?
If you wish to accuse a spy agency of spying on its own citizens, you must have proof. To obtain proof you must make very clear and deliberate attempts to steal them so that you may present them as evidence.
I seem to recall not too long ago anyone claiming that the NSA had massive spying programs aimed at American citizens would be laughed off as tinfoil paranoid conspiracy theorists because our government would never do such a thing. Without his proof that you point out he stole, would anyone have taken him seriously?
There's several examples of people doing the very same thing that were later held up as heroes, except in their cases they stole documents from a corporation that were guilty of illegal abuses. Why should Snowden be any different? Because he stole government documents?
Yes. Since it probably needs to be said: several (not all) of the Snowden disclosures were important, valuable, and necessary: the Verizon metadata, BULLRUN.
It's all very important and necessary. Only the sheep-like are ok with a government that operates in secret against its own citizens. They have pitted themselves in an information war against their own citizenry. Like corporations amass patents, our only weapon to defend ourselves is as much information as we can gather about them.
No, that's not necessarily true. For instance, the "spymall catalog" contained no revelations about NSA abuses against Americans, only details of intelligence tradecraft.
>Apparently the CIA got wise to his attempts and shut him off.
Maybe the CIA sent him. It happened in the USSR (that intelligence services NKVD, KGB, GRU, etc, competed fiercely with each other).
>The NSA wasn't so lucky.
Good.
>But we would be foolish to discount the possibility that all of this is a huge smokescreen for a concerted and consistent attempt to weaken or expose US intelligence operations.
I agree. You make a good case for having a clearly defined separation of intelligence services, and lots of checks.
>The fact that an impingement of our sources and methods helps our adversaries cannot be understated.
It can be overstated, and it has been. Also, what adversaries?
> this is a huge smokescreen for a concerted and consistent attempt to weaken or expose US intelligence operations. The fact that an impingement of our sources and methods helps our adversaries cannot be understated.
> that's because it was decided that a titrating drip of stories would keep the narrative alive in the media and, not coincidentally, better serve the interests of the publications releasing the stories.
It takes time to read the classified documents and decide which documents should be released and which shouldn't be because it might be damaging to national security. Or did you expect Glen Greenwald to make one gigantic article about all of the 50,000+ documents?
There are information security programs which compartmentalize data for multiple levels of security and access as well as controls for the distribution and timing of release. These are used to manage classified data handling among a variety of personnel and agencies with varying clearances.
It could be that Snowden remains in control of his material's release by way of programmed implants in the material for access and timing although the material is physically distant from him. This too is conventional security practice.
>What's been done with the zero to a billion documents that haven't been provided to the press? Who knows? Have they been encrypted and stuck on the Internet as an insurance policy? Have they been provided to Russian intelligence?
Glenn Greenwald has made it clear that if something happens to Snowden (i.e. he's killed), "all the information will be revealed"[1], implying that all the documents he stole will be released.
So, let's imagine a conversation between a Russian intelligence officer and Snowden, sometime around the tail-end of July last year.
In fair Sheremetyevo, where we lay our scene, Edward Snowden is sitting in a bare room, furnished with nothing but a table (bolted to the floor) and two uncomfortable chairs. Snowden's been looking at his reflection in a one-way mirror. A CCTV camera in a corner blinks a red LED at him and there is no door handle/knob on the inside.
Suddenly, a friendly-looking Russian bursts into the room and greets Snowden warmly, full of bonhomie.
Russian: "Good morning, Mr Snowden! You are keeping well, yes?"
He grabs Snowden's hand and shakes it warmly. Snowden half-rises.
Snowden: "Yes, thank you."
The Russian holds onto Snowden's hand for just a split second too long, looking him in the eye with a half-smile on his face, before letting go and settling himself into the other chair.
Russian: "Good, good! You just let us know if you need anything! So! I understand you seek asylum in Russia! No problem! We'd be delighted to offer you asylum! We'll just need you to hand over all the documents you stole."
Snowden: "What?! No! I can't do that!"
Russian: "Come now, Mr Snowden! Under Russian law, before we can officially consider your application for asylum, we need to... inspect these documents of yours for evidence of criminal activity in Russia."
Snowden: "No, I can't... That's outrageous! I'm not going to do give you those documents!"
Russian: "I'm sorry, Mr Snowden but I'm afraid I must insist! Otherwise..." [He glances down at his lapel and flicks away an imaginary speck of dust before looking back at Snowden and shrugging.]
Snowden: "Otherwise what? You'll send me back to America! How could you threaten to do that?! They'll torture me! They'll kill me! How could Russia, with its long and impeccable record of respecting human rights and the freedom of the press even consider doing such a thing?!"
Russian: "It's out of my hands, Mr Snowden. Besides... You know, there are some of my colleagues who have been reading what Mr Greenwald has been saying, about how the United States better hope nothing happens to you because, if anything does happen, all the documents will be released!"
Snowden: "Well, that's an obvious way to make sure that the CIA don't try to silence me by killing me!"
Russian: "Yes, of course but.. Well, some of my colleagues have beeen asking why we shouldn't simply kill you ourselves and manufacture evidence that it was a CIA hit squad. That way we can embarrass the United States and simply download all the documents from the Internet when they are released."
Snowden: "...!"
Russian: "I mean, these are crazy people! Relics of the KGB. They wouldn't think twice about shooting you in the head. Or torturing you to extract as much information as possible and then shooting you in the head. I tried to argue against them but my power here is limited, Mr Snowden. I begged them to reconsider and eventually, they agreed to give you a chance to cooperate."
Snowden: "..."
Russian: "So, Mr Snowden. You will share these documents with us?"
Why in the world would the the US kill Snowden? They have nothing to gain and everything to lose. You think the Russians are stupid enough to send a goon to threaten him? The second he gets out of that interview he's going to tell the media all about it.
Why would there be a very suspicious "lying about wearing a condom" charge leveled at Assange with multiple super-powers demanding justice for an unnamed swedish woman, coincidentally right when he's pissing off those super-powers? Sounds like silly spy movie stuff, like COINTELPRO or something, stuff that would never happen in the real world.
It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. There really are people out there playing the game for those stakes, and most of us aren't idealistic or dumb enough to jump into their game.
It is (apparently) per US policy to use weapons (like drone missile strikes) with high likelihood for collateral damage without taking such damage into account.
Drone strikes are much more accurate than conventional weapons. Nothing is 100% accurate 100% of the time, so using them vs. carpet bombing an entire neighborhood is a good thing, not bad.
> Drone strikes are much more accurate than conventional weapons.
Drone strikes are conventional weapons. They are more accurate than many alternative conventional "stand-off" weapons that seek to minimize risk to the weapon user, and less accurate (though perhaps more reliable) than many other alternative conventional weapons (a knife is far more accurate than a drone-launched missile, but far less reliable in many of the circumstances where drone strikes are used.)
We aren't going to send Seal Team 6 in to knife everyone we want to kill around the world.
Drone strikes are more accurate than F14's bombing buildings, and also safer for American soldiers (since they can't get shot down), thus they are a gain vs. a loss in terms of US personnel killed and accidental collateral damage (but this is still not the ideal 0%).
Oooor maybe they knew that the US stranded him in Russia on purpose to try and pass them fake information. Their agents had already found out about the plot so they decided to play along, providing a tactical advantage, by letting their American counterparts think the mission had been successful.
Or it took much less effort to offer him asylum and score political points, knowing full well that the disclosures would also be damaging to 'enemies'.
Or they knew he had information on them and that it would come out as well.
Or maybe they already knew what he knew through other sources and didn't need his documents.
Or...
Or...
There are many possible scenarios (some much more ridiculous than others) but it is always lots of fun to just jump to the one that is most like a spy novel. It certainly is the most entertaining no doubt!
I find myself gradually coming around to the Snowden side, but it is entirely despite his fans on HN, not because of them.
The concept of a self-releasing trove-in-case-I-die is fascinating to the HN crowd from a technical perspective, but it puts Snowden in a really bad light. Without it he can make a convincing argument that he only took what was necessary to expose bad behavior.
He took who knows how many documents. So far only a select few have been released that support his allegations. I have no doubt there is information in his stack that could cause very bad things to happen to various people and/or organizations. Chances are those documents will never be released, if he has any level of conscience. Therefore, if the people who might do him harm understand that such documentation will not be released as long as he is not harmed, then it's a defense mechanism that fits exactly in line with what he claims he is doing all this for in the first place.
If he had done a massive document dump onto the Internet then I would have immediately questioned his motives.
Snowden himself has made it clear that he took documents from NSA en masse, far more documents than have ever been disclosed in the media.
How many of those documents have been released to the press? We don't know. But what we do know is, of the documents he gave to the press, only a subset have been released. In Greenwald's case, that's because it was decided that a titrating drip of stories would keep the narrative alive in the media and, not coincidentally, better serve the interests of the publications releasing the stories. In other cases it's because journalists have resisted full disclosure out of concern for its propriety.
What's been done with the zero to a billion documents that haven't been provided to the press? Who knows? Have they been encrypted and stuck on the Internet as an insurance policy? Have they been provided to Russian intelligence? Were they stolen from Snowden in an embassy in China? Are they vouchsafed with his acquaintances? Does Wikileaks have them? Nobody knows. Including the author of this blog post.
There are places those documents can go that will alter history's judgement on Snowden. For instance, if he offered wholesale access to US intelligence secrets to Russia, a country which painstakingly and overtly spies on its own citizens and routinely kills journalists (Barton Gellman is not in hiding in the US, for what it's worth), there aren't going to be any adoring spreads about him my grandkid's history book.
You can tell by the questions that jump to my mind what I generally think of Snowden. But nobody who (a) is skeptical of Snowden and (b) posts on Internet message boards could possibly be unaware of how out-on-a-limb that impression must be, because Snowden skepticism invariably whips up a frothy swell of criticism. Unfortunately, the author of this blog post doesn't seem to have the benefit of a critical readership; it's clear that he hasn't actually thought through what's happened.